Rap Recordings Help N.y. Students

May 12, 1986|The New York Times

NEW YORK -- New York City and several school districts in the metropolitan area, in an effort to help some students, are using educational recordings based on rap music, a style of rhythmic talking that originated on the city`s streets.

The recordings, which school officials say help reinforce more traditional teaching methods, cover subjects ranging from grammar to history to mathematics.

One on history, for example, relates the following:

There`s a black Frenchman that you ought to know,

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable founded Chicago.

John Cabot sailed for England, he got some fame,

He gave that country a New World claim.

That famous sailor is remembered most

For sailing up our own East Coast.

The lyrics are written by Douglas Henderson, a former disc jockey who started recording the tapes in 1981, and Ed Robinson, a former teacher.

Robinson described the guidelines they follow in writing the lyrics: ``First, it has to be appropriate to what we want to express. Second, the children must be able to understand it. Third, it must rhyme, and last of all, it must raise the children`s consciousness level.``

``We`re taking the nonsense of the current rap experiences, which can sometimes be downright crude, and taking it to a higher level,`` he said. ``Just as children practice speech through Mother Goose rhymes, the same approach can be used to learn math or history.``

Henderson`s Philadelphia-based company, Get Ready Inc., has sold 30,000 of the cassettes nationally, about a third in the New York area, where about a dozen school districts are using them.

In New York City, the Board of Education approved the tapes as an educational supplement for all junior high school students throughout the city`s 32 school districts and for special-education classes.

``I think they`re excellent for reinforcement purposes, but not for basic education,`` said Lorelle Lawson, head of the curriculum development unit for special education.

``These kinds of tapes help students acquire some basic skills differently,`` said Dr. Dora Schriro, assistant commissioner of program services for the Department of Correction. She serves as liaison to the Board of Education in working with adolescents detained on Rikers Island.

``It isn`t that this is a better way of teaching them,`` she said, ``but it is something that these kids can understand. There are special kids who need to be taught in special ways.``